Police begin searching Saskatoon landfill in case of woman missing since 2020

On a cold, damp morning, police began their search of the Saskatoon landfill Wednesday as part of their investigation into the 2020 disappearance of Mackenzie Lee Trottier.

The search is scheduled to last as long as 33 days.

With a large white tent where police will be working visible behind him, Mackenzie Trottier's father Paul Trottier said it's a place "nobody wants to be."

"I think anyone who would be standing in my position can understand the emotions that are involved," he said. "The enormous amount of work that's going on behind us is staggering."

The search will focus on a specific area of the landfill.

Saskatoon police Staff Sgt. Corey Lenius said excavators have spent the last couple of weeks removing the "overburden" above the area they need to search, which is about 930 cubic metres total.

"When you're speaking of a landfill, there's a lot of packing, the things that the landfill does, they're compacting. We have time, weather," Lenius said. "It's hard to say what condition anything that we're searching for could be in at this point, based on the time that's passed, based on all the environmental issues, and based on the work process that the landfill operates on."

Lenius said the investigation gave officers an indication of which garbage trucks to track, and police were then able to access those trucks' GPS tracking co-ordinates from the city.

With help from city landfill engineers, police were able to determine a "layer of interest" to investigate. Teams of 14 officers, plus dogs with special training on finding human remains, will rotate through, working every day to sift through the items in the area they're searching.

Lenius said the work will be "meticulous" and "draining."

Trottier, who was 22 when she went missing, was last seen on Dec. 21, 2020.

Her family has worked to bring attention to her case, including conducting an interprovincial poster campaign in 2021 and offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to her return.

Her father Paul said on Wednesday that while this search is about his daughter, it's also about all missing people.

"That's what I want people to remember," he said. "This is a family, this is a human being. All missing people, no matter what their past is, they're human beings, and they deserve our attention."